Taking the College to the next step
in its drive to become a top-tier institution, the Campus Master
Plan outlines physical development of the campus -- starting with
new buildings right away and looking forward 10 years.

by Anne Ryan

As President Peggy R. Williams reported in
our last issue ("Five
Years On," 2002/4 issue), Ithaca College has made extraordinary
strides in recent years. The College is attracting a greater number
of academically gifted students and top-quality faculty members,
expanding its programs, and working to increase diversity. Its
students and faculty are producing work that ranks in the top tier
of their disciplines. Students here, like around the country, are
more physically active, more interested in sports and in health
and fitness. They are engaged with new technologies in their academic
and personal lives. "In short, we are striving to become a truly
first-rate school," says Williams. "To be a top-level institution,
our facilities need to be the best, just as our people are the
best."

The campus has undergone tremendous change in the last decade
or so, with Roy H. Park Hall, the James J. Whalen Center for Music,
the Center for Health Sciences, Williams Hall, the Center for Natural
Sciences, the Fitness Center, and other buildings having been added
in the last 15 years. But more facilities upgrades and additions
are needed to keep the College competitive and, indeed, where it
wants to be -- at the very forefront of higher education.

"We're making an already fine College even better." That's
how President Williams characterizes the College's initiatives
for
the physical development of the campus. A plan for such development
grew out of the institutional plan, which itself resulted from
two years of careful and thorough study by representatives from
all segments of the campus community. Among the issues that emerged
from the institutional study was the realization that much work
had to be done to upgrade, renovate, and modernize the campus infrastructure
-- making it fully capable of supporting the first-class school
IC is fast becoming.